August 2020

Mon aug 3
My world has crapped out.
Trump? Yeah, yeah.
Pandemic? Yawn.
Protests in the street? Meh.

Celia is still here and she’s been making a round (or two) of cocktails every evening, so we go through a fair amount of ice. Until the ice maker crapped out, that is. And when something breaks around here, I am the go-to guy. I googled it with mixed results, and then took it apart, and then took it apart some more. Eventually, a corroded connection proved to be the problem, so I fixed it, put it back together, made sure it worked, and had an iced cocktail.

Then the internet crapped out. It does this a lot, and it’s rare that we can stream all the way through a show without an interruption. It’s an embarrassment, and I am ready to ditch our DSL for satellite service.

Then the water crapped out. The well pump’s been tripping the breaker for a month or two, and it finally bit the dust. The well drilling company sent a crew right out, and it looks like the well may have been hit by lightning, because all the well pump wires were fused together just below the well head.

They say lightning doesn’t strike twice. I hope they’re right.

My truck’s A/C is still crapped out, because Toyota is sticking with its story that it’s not covered in the frame replacement package, and I haven’t been able to bring myself to pay to get it fixed.

My hearing aid batteries are crapping out, so I gotta keep a spare in my pocket.

You want to know what hasn’t crapped out lately? My 40 year old motorcycles.

—

Mary and I are at odds over the cheese drawer.
I say we should be able to get by with, say, half a dozen cheeses in the drawer. Cheddar, goat, parm, and a few others to jazz things up. But no. That’s not how it works.
What actually happens is: we buy a cheese, eat some of it, wrap up the rest, and put it in the cheese drawer, never to be disturbed.
Rinse and repeat, and pretty soon, you’ve got quite a collection.
Well Mary doesn’t like eating cheese she’s eaten before, so if anyone is going to eat these cheeses down to a manageable few, it’s going to have to be me.
Therefore, my mission, for the month of August, is to eat my way through the cheese drawer.

August 4. Nineteen cheeses.

fri aug 7
I’ve been grinding a lot of steel, and I’ve been really anal about protecting my face from sparks and flying grit, and there’s been no problem. Today, by mistake, I forgot my face mask when I cut off a screw, and I got some grit in my eye. Grit in your eye doesn’t just ‘go away’ like sawdust does, and I bet this will soon be the third piece of grit my doctor’s taken out of me.
Clearly, I’m doing something wrong. Something like: not being careful enough.
I’m gonna work on that.
Update: it eventually went away.

The ice maker worked for a few days after I fixed it and then it crapped out again. I knew that was going to happen, because it was not a very robust fix. Fuck it. I ordered a new one, put it in, and it works.

mon aug 10
We get internet from Consolidated and, during a recent spell of poor service, Mary spent some time on the phone with customer service. They dropped her call four times and gave her two different stories about what our problem is. If I was Consolidated, I’d be embarrassed. This has been going on for a long time, and I wanted to see if there was a better way out there.
Some day, my electric company will run fiber down my road, and it will solve my problem.
Some day, Elon Musk will get Starlink working and it will solve everyone’s problem.
Some day, Consolidated might even get it’s shit together and solve it’s own problem.
But not today. So I signed up for satellite internet instead. The advertised and the actual prices don’t match, but I expected that, and I signed up anyway.
I would argue that I mostly understand the tradeoffs involved in satellite internet:
Streaming should be perfect. Browsing should be a little slower. Gaming won’t work.
Well. None of the above. And certain sites just plain don’t load. Not what I expected at all.
Reviewing my options.

wed aug 12
The cat eats well in the summer. Breakfast, mice and dinner. His digestive system is delicate, though, and if anything is going to make him barf, it’s going to be the mice. So …
Yesterday, it was hot, and I’d had a dirty day, and I took a shower late at night, and I finally felt clean and fresh, and I turned out the light and I headed for bed in the dark, and I stepped in a pile of cat barf. It squished between my toes, and my whole body froze, and I swore gently. I limped back to the bathroom, washed my foot off, covered up the pile, and went to bed.

Ella’s here, visiting for a couple weeks while a big family drama plays out.
Mary and Celia have been busting their balls decorating the green house so that Ella can stay there in comfort and style. It’s working out pretty good so far.

Guest lodging next door.

thu aug 13
It rained two days ago, and yesterday was nice, so today, the soil was perfect for weeding, as the ground is all puffed up, and it’s easy to get the roots out.
There are two schools of thought about weeding. Some people are content to just pull off the green part and call it a day. And then there are people (I assume there are others) who want to remove the whole weed, roots and all. When I pull a weed, I want to kill it. I don’t want to see it again.

In the Ellipse, the dominant weed is 90% root, like an iceberg, and the roots grow sideways.

A deep cleaning is the only way to get rid of it. I know this is possible because way back when, in Westford, I planted snow-on-the-mountain in the Moat, and it spread like a virus, and I still managed to get rid of it. And I figure: if I can get rid of snow-on-the-mountain, I can get rid of weeds.
Normally, weeding is a chore, but I try to think if it as a harvest instead. They are abundant, healthy, and always in season, so I’ve been harvesting 5 gallons a day (which works up a sweat, but doesn’t kill me) At that rate, it’ll take me about a week to clear it out.

BFFs

I have 3 pieces of re-bar leftover from my re-bar chair project, so I’m turning them into a re-bar footstool and a re-bar coffee table.

Nobody but me thought this was a good idea.

mon aug 25
It’s a long story, but we are in quarantine.
Everyone seems to be fine, but following the rules has meant no trips to the hardware store for 9 days now, and it has driven me insane. My various projects are all dead in the water until I can get my hands on some starting fluid, carburetor cleaner, WD-40, MoS2 grease, and fingernail polish. When I am done, there will be no ozone layer left.
In the end, we all tested negative, but I kind of wish we’d all been positive instead, because nobody’s had any symptoms at all, and if this is as bad as my own personal covid experience was going to be, then I’ll take it. Unfortunately, the adventure continues.
Up to now, my pandemic life has been pretty much the same as my pre-pandemic life, but quarantine was really hard for me. After several days, my need for a quick trip to the hardware store became rather visceral, and toward the end, it was all I could think about.
I think most of us have … things that we just gotta do.
Things you’re hard-wired to do.
Things you’ve never not done.
So when you’re told you can’t do those Things, it’s hard.
Not going to the hardware store was hard for me, and the intensity of my reaction surprised me, and it helped me to sort of understand the average schmuck who just wants to schmooze over beers, but can’t, due to the virus. But does anyway.
Because when the last test result rolled in, I was already warming up the Suzuki, and I hit 4 hardware stores before lunch.

My morning haul.

While I was cooped up, I put a lot of time into refurbishing the Goldwing. I’m ‘mostly’ done with the drive, the suspension, the carbs, and the brakes, and it is going to be a real nice machine.